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NIBSY AS SANTA CLAUS 



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NIBSY’S CHRISTMAS 


BY 

JACOB A. RI IS 


AUTHOR OF “THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR” AND “ HOW THE OTHER 
HALF LIVES” 


COPYRIq®^- 


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Of 


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spirit 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1893 


I 



Copyright, 1893, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


» 






TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 










To Her Most Gracious Majesty 
Louise 

Queen of Denmark 

the friend of the afflicted and the mother of the 
motherless in my childhood's home 
these leaves are inscribed 
with the profound respect and admiration 

of 

the Author 


» 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Nibsy’s Christmas, / 

PVbat the Christmas Sun Saw in the 
Tenements, ig 

Skippy of Scrabble Alley, . . . . .41 






NIBSY’S CHRISTMAS 



NIBSY’S CHRISTMAS 


It was Christmas-eve over on the East Side. 
Darkness was closing in on a cold, hard day. 
The light that struggled through the frozen 
windows of the delicatessen store, and the 
saloon on the corner, fell upon men with 
empty dinner-pails who were hurrying home- 
ward, their coats buttoned tightly, and heads 
bent against the steady blast from the river, as 
if they were butting their way down the street. 

The wind had forced the door of the saloon 
ajar, and was whistling through the crack ; but 
in there it seemed to make no one afraid. Be- 
tween roars of laughter, the clink of glasses 
and the rattle of dice on the hard-wood counter 
were heard out in the street. More than one 
of the passers-by who came within range was 
taken with an extra shiver in which the vision 


4 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


of wife and little ones waiting at home for his 
coming was snuffed out, as he dropped in to 
brace up. The lights were long out when the 
silent streets re-echoed his unsteady steps to- 
ward home, where the Christmas welcome had 
turned to dread. 

But in this twilight hour they burned 
brightly yet, trying hard to pierce the bitter 
cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. 
Where the lamps in the delicatessen store 
made a mottled streak of brightness across the 
flags, two little boys stood with their noses 
flattened against the window. Their warm 
breath made little round holes on the frosty 
pane, that came and went, affording passing 
glimpses of the wealth within, of the piles of 
smoked herring, of golden cheese, of sliced 
bacon and generous, fat-bellied hams ; of the 
rows of odd-shaped bottles and jars on the 
shelves that held there was no telling what 
good things, only it was certain that they must 
be good from the looks of them. 

And the heavenly smell of spices and things 
that reached the boys through the open door 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


5 


each time the tinkling bell announced the 
coming or going of a customer ! Better than 
all, back there on the top shelf the stacks of 
square honey - cakes, with their frosty coats 
of sugar, tied in bundles with strips of blue 
paper. 

The wind blew straight through the patched 
and threadbare jackets of the lads as they crept 
closer to the window, struggling hard with the 
frost to make their peep-holes bigger, to take 
in the whole of the big cake with the almonds 
set in ; but they did not heed it. 

“Jim!” piped the smaller of the two, after 
a longer stare than usual ; “hey, Jim! them’s 
Sante Clause’s. See ’em ? ” 

“ Sante Claus ! ” snorted the other, scorn- 
fully, applying his eye to the clear spot on the 
pane. “There ain’t no ole duffer like dat. 
Them’s honey-cakes. Me ’n’ Tom had a bite 
o’ one wunst.” 

“There ain’t no Sante Claus?” retorted 
the smaller shaver, hotly, at his peep-hole. 
“ There is, too. I seen him myself when he 
cum to our alley last ” 


6 


AUBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


“ What’s youse kids a-scrappin’ fur ? ” broke 
in a strange voice. 

Another boy, bigger, but dirtier and tougher- 
looking than either of the two, had come up 
behind them unobserved. He carried an arm- 
ful of unsold “extras” under one arm. The 
other was buried to the elbow in the pocket 
of his ragged trousers. 

The “kids” knew him, evidently, and the 
smallest eagerly accepted him as umpire. 

“It’s Jim w’at says there ain’t no Sante 
Claus, and I seen him ” 

“Jim!” demanded the elder ragamuffin, 
sternly, looking hard at the culprit; “Jim! 
y’ere a chump! No Sante Claus? What’re 
ye givin’ us ? Now, watch me ! ” 

With utter amazement the boys saw him dis- 
appear through the door under the tinkling 
bell into the charmed precincts of smoked 
herring, jam, and honey-cakes. Petrified at 
their peep-holes, they watched him, in the 
veritable presence of Santa Claus himself with 
the fir-branch, fish out five battered pennies 
from the depths of his pocket and pass them 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


7 


over to the woman behind the jars, in exchange 
for one of the bundles of honey-cakes tied 
with blue. As if in a dream they saw him 
issue forth with the coveted prize. 

“ There, kid ! ” he said, holding out the two 
fattest and whitest cakes to Santa Claus’s 
champion ; “ there’s yer Christmas. Run 

along, now, to yer barracks; and you, Jim, 
here’s one for you, though yer don’t desarve 
it. Mind ye let the kid alone.” 

“ This one’ll have to do for me grub, I 
guess. I ain’t sold me ‘ Newses,’ and the ole 
man’ll kick if I bring ’em home.” 

And before the shuffling feet of the raga- 
muffins hurrying homeward had turned the 
corner, the last mouthful of the newsboy’s 
supper was smothered in a yell of “ Extree ! ” 
as he shot across the street to intercept a pass- 
ing stranger. 

As the evening wore on it grew rawer and 
more blustering still. Flakes of dry snow 
that stayed where they fell, slowly tracing the 
curb-lines, the shutters, and the doorsteps of 


8 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


the tenements with gathering white, were 
borne up on the storm from the water. To 
the right and left stretched endless streets 
between the towering barracks, as beneath 
frowning cliffs pierced with a thousand glow- 
ing eyes that revealed the watch-fires within 
— a mighty city of cave-dwellers held in the 
thraldom of poverty and want. 

Outside there was yet hurrying to and fro. 
Saloon doors were slamming and bare-legged 
urchins, carrying beer-jugs, hugged the walls 
close for shelter. From the depths of a blind 
alley floated out the discordant strains of a 
vagabond brass band “ blowing in ” the yule of 
the poor. Banished by police ordinance from 
the street, it reaped a scant harvest of pennies 
for Christmas-cheer from the windows opening 
on the backyard. Against more than one 
pane showed the bald outline of a forlorn little 
Christmas-tree, some stray branch of a hem- 
lock picked up at the grocer’s and set in a pail 
for “the childer ” to dance around, a dime’s 
worth of candy and tinsel on the boughs. 

From the attic over the way came, in spells 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


9 


between, the gentle tones of a German song 
about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East- 
Side tenements begins with the sunset on the 
“holy eve,” except where the name is as a 
threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes 
the whir of many sewing-machines, worked by 
the sweater's slaves with weary feet and ach- 
ing backs, drowned every feeble note of joy 
that struggled to make itself heard above the 
noise of the great treadmill. 

To these what was Christmas but the name 
for persecution, for suffering, reminder of lost 
kindred and liberty, of the slavery of eighteen 
hundred years, freedom from which was pur- 
chased only with gold. Aye, gold ! The gold 
that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the 
good will, aye, and the good name, of the op- 
pressor, with his houses and land. At the 
thought the tired eye glistened, the aching 
back straightened, and to the weary foot there 
came new strength to finish the long task while 
the city slept. 

Where a narrow passage-way put in between 
two big tenements to a ramshackle rear bar- 


IO 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


rack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow 
of the doorway and stole a long look down the 
dark alley. 

He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold 
papers — worn dirty and ragged as his clothes 
by this time — before he ventured in, picking 
his way between barrels and heaps of garbage ; 
past the Italian cobbler’s hovel, where a tal- 
low dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, be- 
fore a cheap print of the “ Mother of God,” 
showed that even he knew it was Christmas 
and liked to show it ; past the Sullivan flat, 
where Idows and drunken curses mingled with 
the shriek of women, as Nibsy had heard many 
nights before this one. 

He shuddered as he felt his way past the 
door, partly with a premonition of what was in 
store for himself, if the “old man” was at 
home, partly with a vague, uncomfortable feel- 
ing that somehow Christmas-eve should be dif- 
ferent from other nights, even in the alley. 
Down to its farthest end, to the last rickety 
flight of steps that led into the filth and dark- 
ness of the tenement. Up this he crept, three 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


1 1 


flights, to a door at which he stopped and lis- 
tened, hesitating, as he had stopped at the en- 
trance to the alley ; then, with a sudden, de- 
fiant gesture, he pushed it open and went in. 

A bare and cheerless room ; a pile of rags for 
a bed in the corner, another in the dark al- 
cove, miscalled bedroom ; under the window a 
broken cradle and an iron-bound chest, upon 
which sat a sad-eyed woman with hard lines in 
her face, peeling potatoes in a pan ; in the mid- 
dle of the room a rusty stove, with a pile of 
wood, chopped on the floor alongside. A man 
on his knees in front fanning the fire with an 
old slouch hat. With each breath of draught 
he stirred, the crazy old pipe belched forth tor- 
rents of smoke at every point. As Nibsy 
entered, the man desisted from his efforts and 
sat up glaring at him. A villainous ruffian’s 
face, scowling with anger. 

“ Late ag’in ! ” he growled ; “ an’ yer papers 
not sold. What did I tell yer, brat, if ye 
dared ” 

“Tom ! Tom ! ” broke in the wife, in a des- 
perate attempt to soothe the ruffian’s temper. 


12 


NIBSY' S CHRISTMAS 


“The boy can’t help it, an’ it’s Christmas-eve. 
For the love o’ ” 

“To thunder with yer rot and with yer 
brat ! ” shouted the man, mad with the fury of 
passion. “ Let me at him ! ” and, reaching 
over, he seized a heavy knot of wood and flung 
it at the head of the boy. 

Nibsy had remained just inside the door, 
edging slowly toward his mother, but with a 
watchful eye on the man at the stove. At the 
first movement of his hand toward the wood- 
pile he sprang for the stairway with the agility 
of a cat, and just dodged the missile. It struck 
the door, as he slammed it behind him, with 
force enough to smash the panel. 

Down the three flights in as many jumps 
Nibsy went, and through the alley, over bar- 
rels and barriers, never stopping once till he 
reached the street, and curses and shouts were 
left behind. 

In his flight he had lost his unsold papers, 
and he felt ruefully in his pocket as he went 
down the street, pulling his rags about him 
as much from shame as to keep out the cold. 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 


13 


Four pennies were all he had left after his 
Christmas treat to the two little lads from the 
barracks ; not enough for supper or for a bed ; 
and it was getting colder all the time. 

On the sidewalk in front of the notion store 
a belated Christmas party was in progress. 
The children from the tenements in the alley 
and across the way were having a game of 
blindman’s-buff, groping blindly about in the 
crowd to catch each other. They hailed Nibsy 
with shouts of laughter, calling to him to join in. 

“We’re having Christmas !” they yelled. 

Nibsy did not hear them. He was think- 
ing, thinking, the while turning over his four 
pennies at the bottom of his pocket. 

Thinking if Christmas was ever to come to 
him, and the children’s Santa Claus to find his 
alley where the baby slept within reach of her 
father’s cruel hand. As for him, he had never 
known anything but blows and curses. He 
could take care of himself. But his mother 

and the baby . And then it came to him 

with shuddering cold that it was getting late, 
and that he must find a place to sleep. 


14 


NIBSY’S CHRISTMAS 


He weighed in his mind the merits of two 
or three places where he was in the habit of 
hiding from the “ cops ” when the alley got to 
he too hot for him. 

There was the hay-barge down by the dock, 
with the watchman who got drunk sometimes, 
and so gave the boys a chance. The chances 
were at least even of its being available on 
Christmas-eve, and of Santa Claus having thus 
done him a good turn after all. 

Then there was the snug berth in the sand- 
box you could curl all up in. Nibsy thought 
with regret of its being, like the hay-barge, so 
far away and to windward too. 

Down by the printing-offices there were the 
steam-gratings, and a chance corner in the cel- 
lars, stories and stories underground, where the 
big presses keep up such a clatter from mid- 
night till far into the day. 

As he passed them in review, Nibsy made 
up his mind with sudden determination, and, 
setting his face toward the south, made off 
down town. 


NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 1 5 

The rumble of the last departing news- 
wagon over the pavement, now buried deep 
in snow, had died away in the distance, 
when, from out of the bowels of the earth 
there issued a cry, a cry of mortal terror and 
pain that was echoed by a hundred throats. 

From one of the deep cellar-ways a man ran 
out, his clothes and hair and beard afire ; on 
his heels a breathless throng of men and boys ; 
following them, close behind, a rush of smoke 
and fire. 

The clatter of the presses ceased suddenly, 
to be followed quickly by the clangor of hur- 
rying fire-bells. With hook and axes the fire- 
men rushed in ; hose was let down through the 
manholes, and down there in the depths the 
battle was fought and won. 

The building was saved ; but in the midst of 
the rejoicing over the victory there fell a sud- 
den silence. From the cellar-way a grimy, 
helmeted figure arose, with something black 
and scorched in his arms. A tarpaulin was 
spread upon the snow and upon it he laid his 
burden, while the silent crowd made room and 


1 6 NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 

word went over to the hospital for the doctor 
to come quickly. 

Very gently they lifted poor little Nibsy — 
for it was he, caught in his berth by a worse 
enemy than the “ cop ” or the watchman of the 
hay-barge — into the ambulance that bore him 
off to the hospital cot, too late. 

Conscious only of a vague discomfort that 
had succeeded terror and pain, Nibsy won- 
dered uneasily why they were all so kind. 
Nobody had taken the trouble to as much as 
notice him before. When he had thrust his 
papers into their very faces they had pushed 
him roughly aside. Nibsy, unhurt and able to 
fight his way, never had a show. Sick and 
maimed and sore, he was being made much of, 
though he had been caught where the boys 
were forbidden to go. Things were queer, 
anyhow, and 

The room was getting so dark that he could 
hardly see the doctor’s kindly face, and had to 
grip his hand tightly to make sure that he was 
there ; almost as dark as the stairs in the alley 
he had come down in such a hurry. 


NIBSY' S CHRISTMAS 


17 


There was the baby now — poor baby — and 
mother — and then a great blank, and it was all 
a mystery to poor Nibsy no longer. For, just 
as a wild-eyed woman pushed her way through 
the crowd of nurses and doctors to his bedside, 
crying for her boy, Nibsy gave up his soul to 
God. 

It was very quiet in the alley. Christmas 
had come and gone. Upon the last door a 
bow of soiled crape was nailed up with two 
tacks. It had done duty there a dozen times 
before, that year. 

Upstairs, Nibsy was at home, and for once 
the neighbors, one and all, old and young, 
came to see him. 

Even the father, ruffian that he was, offered 
no objection. Cowed and silent, he sat in the 
corner by the window farthest from where the 
plain little coffin stood, with the lid closed 
down. 

A couple of the neighbor-women were talk- 
ing in low tones by the stove, when there 
came a timid knock at the door. Nobody 


1 8 NIBSY' S CHRISTMAS 

answering, it was pushed open, first a little, 
then far enough to admit the shrinking form 
of a little ragamuffin, the smaller of the two 
who had stood breathing peep-holes on the 
window-pane of the delicatessen store the 
night before when Nibsy came along. 

He dragged with him a hemlock branch, the 
leavings from some Christmas-tree fitted into 
its block by the grocer for a customer. 

“It’s from Sante Claus,” he said, laying it 
on the coffin. “Nibsy knows.” And he went 
out. 

Santa Claus had come to Nibsy, after all, in 
his alley. And Nibsy knew. 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 
IN THE TENEMENTS 




WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 
IN THE TENEMENTS 

The December sun shone clear and cold 
upon the city. It shone upon rich and poor 
alike. It shone into the homes of the wealthy 
on the avenues and in the uptown streets, and 
into courts and alleys hedged in by towering 
tenements down town. It shone upon throngs 
of busy holiday shoppers that went out and in 
at the big stores, carrying bundles big and 
small, all alike filled with Christmas cheer and 
kindly messages from Santa Claus. 

It shone down so gayly and altogether cheer- 
ily there, that wraps and overcoats were unbut- 
toned for the north wind to toy with. “ My, 
isn’t it a nice day ? ” said one young lady in a 
fur shoulder-cape to a friend, pausing to kiss 
and compare lists of Christmas gifts. 


22 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


“Most too hot,” was the reply, and the 
friends passed on. There was warmth within 
and without. Life was very pleasant under 
the Christmas sun up on the avenue. 

Down in Cherry Street the rays of the sun 
climbed over a row of tall tenements with an 
effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that 
was in them, and fell into a dirty block, half- 
choked with trucks, with ash-barrels and rub- 
bish of all sorts, among which the dust was 
whirled in clouds upon fitful, shivering blasts 
that searched every nook and cranny of the big 
barracks. They fell upon a little girl, bare- 
footed and in rags, who struggled out of an 
alley with a broken pitcher in her grimy fist, 
against the wind that set down the narrow slit 
like the draught through a big factory chimney. 
J ust at the mouth of the alley it took her with 
a sudden whirl, a cyclone of dust and drifting 
ashes, tossed her fairly off her feet, tore from 
her grip the threadbare shawl she clutched at 
her throat, and set her down at the saloon-door 
breathless and half-smothered. She had just 
time to dodge through the storm-doors before 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


23 


another whirlwind swept whistling down the 
street. 

“ My, but isn’t it cold ? ” she said, as she 
shook the dust out of her shawl and set the 
pitcher down on the bar. “Gimme a pint,” 
laying down a few pennies that had been 
wrapped in a corner of the shawl, “and mam- 
ma says make it good and full.” 

“All’us the way with youse kids — want a 
barrel when yees pays fer a pint,” growled the 
bartender. “There, run along, and don’t ye 
hang around that stove no more. We ain’t a 
steam-heatin’ the block fer nothin’.” 

The little girl clutched her shawl and the 
pitcher, and slipped out into the street where 
the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore 
down on her in pillars of whirling dust as soon 
as she appeared. But the sun that pitied her 
bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick 
on old Boreas — it showed her a way between 
the pillars, and only just her skirt was caught 
by one and whirled over her head as she 
dodged into her alley. It peeped after her 
half-way down its dark depths, where it seemed 


24 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


colder even than in the bleak street, but there 
it had to leave her. 

It did not see her dive through the doorless 
opening into a hall where no sun-ray had ever 
entered. It could not have found its way in 
there had it tried. But up the narrow, 
squeaking stairs the girl with the pitcher was 
climbing. Up one flight of stairs, over a knot 
of children, half babies, pitching pennies on 
the landing, over wash-tubs and bedsteads that 
encumbered the next — house-cleaning going 
on in that “ flat ; ” that is to say, the surplus of 
bugs was being burned out with petroleum 
and a feather — up still another, past a half- 
open door through which came the noise of 
brawling and curses. She dodged and quick- 
ened her step a little until she stood pant- 
ing before a door on the fourth landing that 
opened readily as she pushed it with her bare 
foot. 

A room almost devoid of stick or rag one 
, might dignify with the name of furniture. 
Two chairs, one with a broken back, the other 
on three legs, beside a rickety table that stood 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 25 

upright only by leaning against the wall. On 
the unwashed floor a heap of straw covered 
with dirty bed-tick for a bed ; a foul-smelling 
slop-pail in the middle of the room; a crazy 
stove, and back of it a door or gap opening 
upon darkness. There was something in 
there, but what it was could only be surmised 
from a heavy snore that rose and fell regularly. 
It was the bedroom of the apartment, win- 
dowless, airless, and sunless, but-rented at a 
price a millionaire would denounce as robbery. 

“That you, Liza?” said a voice that discov- 
ered a woman bending over the stove. “ Run 
’n’ get the childer. Dinner’s ready.” 

The winter sun glancing down the wall of 
the opposite tenement, with a hopeless effort 
to cheer the back-yard, might have peeped 
through the one window of the room in Mrs. 
McGroarty’s “flat,” had that window not been 
coated with the dust of ages, and discovered 
that dinner-party in action. It might have 
found a hundred like it in the alley. Four un- 
kempt children, copies each in his or her way 
of Liza and their mother, Mrs. McGroarty, 


2 6 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


who “did washing” for a living. A meat 
bone, a “ cut ” from the butcher’s at four cents 
a pound, green pickles, stale bread and beer. 
Beer for the four, a sup all round, the baby in- 
cluded. Why not ? It was the one relish the 
searching ray would have found there. Pota- 
toes were there, too — potatoes and meat ! Say 
not the poor in the tenements are starving. 
In New York only those starve who cannot 
get work and have not the courage to beg. 
Fifty thousand always out of a job, say those 
who pretend to know. A round half-million 
asking and getting charity in eight years, say 
the statisticians of the Charity Organization. 
Any one can go round and see for himself that 
no one need starve in New York. 

From across the yard the sunbeam, as it 
crept up the wall, fell slantingly through the 
attic window whence issued the sound of ham- 
mer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in 
its light, driving nails into the lid of a soap-box 
that was partly filled with straw. Something 
else was there ; as he shifted the lid that didn’t 
fit, the glimpse of sunshine fell across it ; it 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


27 


was a dead child, a little baby in a white slip, 
bedded in straw in a soap-box for a coffin. 
The man was hammering down the lid to take 
it to the Potters Field. At the bed knelt the 
mother, dry-eyed, delirious from starvation that 
had killed her child. Five hungry, frightened 
children cowered in the corner, hardly daring 
to whisper as they looked from the father to 
the mother in terror. 

There was a knock on the door that was 
drowned once, twice, in the noise of the ham- 
mer on the little coffin. Then it was opened 
gently, and a young woman came in with a 
basket. A little silver cross shone upon her 
breast. She went to the poor mother, and 
putting her hand soothingly on her head knelt 
by her with gentle and loving words. The 
half-crazed woman listened with averted face, 
then suddenly burst into tears and hid her 
throbbing head in the other’s lap. 

The man stopped hammering and stared 
fixedly upon the two ; the children gathered 
around with devouring looks as the visitor took 
from her basket bread, meat, and tea. Just 


28 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


then, with a parting, wistful look into the bare 
attic room, the sun-ray slipped away, lingered 
for a moment about the coping outside and 
fled over the housetops. 

As it sped on its winter-day journey, did it 
shine into any cabin in an Irish bog more deso- 
late than these Cherry Street “homes?” An 
army of thousands whose one bright and whole- 
some memory, only tradition of home, is that 
poverty-stricken cabin in the desolate bog, are 
herded in such barracks to-day in New York. 
Potatoes they have ; yes, and meat at four 
cents — even seven. Beer for a relish — never 
without beer. But home ? The home that 
was home even in a bog, with the love of it 
that has made Ireland immortal and a tower 
of strength in the midst of her suffering — what 
of that ? There are no homes in New York’s 
poor tenements. 

Down the crooked path of the Mulberry 
Street Bend the sunlight slanted into the heart 
of New York’s Italy. It shone upon bandan- 
nas and yello>v neckerchiefs ; upon swarthy 
faces and corduroy breeches ; upon black- 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 29 

haired girls — mothers at thirteen ; upon hosts 
of bow-legged children rolling in the dirt ; upon 
pedlers’ carts and ragpickers staggering under 
burdens that threatened to crush them at ev- 
ery step. Shone upon unnumbered Pasquales 
dwelling, working, idling, and gambling there. 
Shone upon the filthiest and foulest of New 
York’s tenements, upon Bandits’ Roost, upon 
Bottle Alley, upon the hidden by-ways that 
lead to the tramp’s burrows. Shone upon the 
scene of annual infant slaughter. Shone into 
the foul core of New York’s slums that is at 
last to go to the realm of bad memories be- 
cause civilized man may not look upon it and 
live without blushing. 

It glanced past the rag-shop in the cellar, 
whence welled up stenches to poison the town, 
into an apartment three flights up that held 
two women, one young, the other old and bent 
The young one had a baby at her breast. She 
was rocking it tenderly in her arms, singing 
in the soft Italian tongue a lullaby, while the 
old granny listened eagerly, her elbows on her 
knees, and a stumpy clay-pipe, blackened with 


30 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


age, between her teeth. Her eyes were set on 
the wall, on which the musty paper hung in 
tatters, fit frame for the wretched, poverty- 
stricken room, but they saw neither poverty nor 
want ; her aged limbs felt not the cold draught 
from without, in which they shivered ; they 
looked far over the seas to sunny Italy, whose 
music was in her ears. 

“O dolce Napoli,” she mumbled between 
her toothless jaws, “ O suol beato ” 

The song ended in a burst of passionate 
grief. The old granny and the baby woke up 
at once. They were not in sunny Italy ; not 
under Southern, cloudless skies. They were in 
“The Bend ” in Mulberry Street, and the wintry 
wind rattled the door as if it would say, in the 
language of their new home, the land of the 
free : “ Less music ! More work ! Root, hog, 
or die ! ” 

Around the corner the sunbeam danced with 
the wind into Mott Street, lifted the blouse of 
a Chinaman and made it play tag with his pig- 
tail. It used him so roughly that he was glad 
to skip from it down a cellar-way that gave out 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


31 


fumes of opium strong enough to scare even 
the north wind from its purpose. The soles of 
his felt shoes showed as he disappeared down 
the ladder that passed for cellar-steps. Down 
there, where daylight never came, a group of 
yellow, almond-eyed men were bending over a 
table playing fan-tan. Their very souls were in 
the game, every faculty of the mind bent on 
the issue and the stake. The one blouse that 
was indifferent to what went on was stretched 
on a mat in a corner. One end of a clumsy 
pipe was in his mouth, the other held over a 
little spirit-lamp on the divan on which he lay. 
Something spluttered in the flame with a pun- 
gent, unpleasant smell. The smoker took a 
long draught, inhaling the white smoke, then 
sank back on his couch in senseless content. 

Upstairs tiptoed the noiseless felt shoes, 
bent on some house errand, to the “ house- 
hold ” floors above, where young white girls 
from the tenements of The Bend and the East 
Side live in slavery worse, if not more galling, 
than any of the galley with ball and chain — 
the slavery of the pipe. Four, eight, sixteen 


32 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


— twenty odd such “ homes ” in this tenement, 
disgracing the very name of home and family, 
for marriage and troth are not in the bargain. 

In one room, between the half-drawn cur- 
tains of which the sunbeam works its way in, 
three girls are lying on as many bunks, smok- 
ing all. They are very young, “under age,” 
though each and every one would glibly swear 
in court to the satisfaction of the police that 
she is sixteen, and therefore free to make her 
own bad choice. Of these, one was brought 
up among the rugged hills of Maine ; the 
other two are from the tenement crowds, 
hardly missed there. But their companion? 
She is twirling the sticky brown pill over the 
lamp, preparing to fill the bowl of her pipe 
with it. As she does so, the sunbeam dances 
across the bed, kisses the red spot on her cheek 
that betrays the secret her tyrant long has 
known, though to her it is hidden yet — that 
the pipe has claimed its victim and soon will 
pass it on to the Potter’s Field. 

“Nell,” says one of her chums in the other 
bunk, something stirred within her by the flash 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 33 

— “Nell, did you hear from the old farm to 
home since you come here ?” 

Nell turns half around, with the toasting- 
stick in her hand, an ugly look on her wasted 
features, a vile oath on her lips. 

“To hell with the old farm,” she says, and 
putting the pipe to her mouth inhales it all, 
every bit, in one long breath, then falls back 
on her pillow in drunken stupor. 

That is what the sun of a winter day saw 
and heard in Mott Street. 

It had travelled far toward the west, search- 
ing many dark corners and vainly seeking en- 
try to others ; had gilt with equal impartiality 
the spires of five hundred churches and the tin 
cornices of thirty thousand tenements, with 
their million tenants and more ; had smiled 
courage and cheer to patient mothers trying to 
make the most of life in the teeming crowds, 
that had too little sunshine by far ; hope to 
toiling fathers striving early and late for bread 
to fill the many mouths clamoring to be fed. 

The brief December day was far spent. 

3 


34 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


Now its rays fell across the North River and 
lighted up the windows of the tenements in 
Hell’s Kitchen and Poverty Gap. In the Gap 
especially they made a brave show ; the win- 
dows of the crazy old frame-house under the 
big tree that set back from the street looked 
as if they were made of beaten gold. But the 
glory did not cross the threshold. Within it 
was dark and dreary and cold. The room at 
the foot of the rickety, patched stairs was 
empty. The last tenant was beaten to death 
by her husband in his drunken fury. The 
sun’s rays shunned the spot ever after, though 
it was long since it could have made out the 
red daub from the mould on the rotten floor. 

Upstairs, in the cold attic, where the wind 
wailed mournfully through every open crack, 
a little girl sat sobbing as if her heart would 
break. She hugged an old doll to her breast. 
The paint was gone from its face ; the yellow 
hair was in a tangle ; its clothes hung in rags. 
But she only hugged it closer. It was her doll. 
They had been friends so long, shared hunger 
and hardship together, and now . 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 35 

Her tears fell faster. One drop trembled 
upon the wan cheek of the doll. The last sun- 
beam shot athwart it and made it glisten like a 
priceless jewel. Its glory grew and filled the 
room. Gone were the black walls, the dark- 
ness and the cold. There was warmth and 
light and joy. Merry voices and glad faces 
were all about. A flock of children danced 
with gleeful shouts about a great Christmas- 
tree in the middle of the floor. Upon its 
branches hung drums and trumpets and toys, 
and countless candles gleamed like beautiful 
stars. Farthest up, at the very top, her doll, 
her very own, with arms outstretched, as if ap- 
pealing to be taken down and hugged. She 
knew it, knew the mission-school that had seen 
her first and only real Christmas, knew the 
gentle face of her teacher, and the writing on 
the wall she had taught her to spell out : “In 
His Name.” His name, who, she had said, 
was all little children’s friend. Was he also 
her dolly’s friend, and would know it among 
the strange people ? 

The light went out ; the glory faded. The 


3 6 WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 

bare room, only colder and more cheerless 
than before, was left. The child shivered. 
Only that morning the doctor had told her 
mother that she must have medicine and food 
and warmth, or she must go to the great hos- 
pital where papa had gone before, when their 
money was all spent. Sorrow and want had 
laid the mother upon the bed he had barely 
left. Every stick of furniture, every stitch of 
clothing on which money could be borrowed, 
had gone to the pawnbroker. Last of all, 
she had carried mamma’s wedding-ring, to pay 
the druggist. Now there was no more left, 
and they had nothing to eat. In a little 
while mamma would wake up, hungry. 

The little girl smothered a last sob and rose 
quickly. She wrapped the doll in a thread- 
bare shawl, as well as she could, tiptoed to the 
door and listened a moment to the feeble 
breathing of the sick mother within. Then 
she went out, shutting the door softly behind 
her, lest she wake her. 

Up the street she went, the way she knew 
so well, one block and a turn round the sa- 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 3 7 

loon corner, the sunset glow kissing the track 
of her bare feet in the snow as she went, to a 
door that rang a noisy bell as she opened it 
and went in. A musty smell filled the close 
room. Packages, great and small, lay piled 
high on shelves behind the worn counter. A 
slovenly woman was haggling with the pawn- 
broker about the money for a skirt she had 
brought to pledge. 

“ Not a cent more than a quarter,” he said, 
contemptuously, tossing the garment aside. 
“It’s half worn out it is, dragging it back 
and forth over the counter these six months. 
Take it or leave it. Hallo ! What have we 
here? Little Finnegan, eh? Your mother 
not dead yet ? It’s in the poor-house ye will 
be if she lasts much longer. What the ” 

He had taken the package from the trem- 
bling child’s hand — the precious doll — and un- 
rolled the shawl. A moment he stood staring 
in dumb amazement at its contents. Then he 
caught it up and flung it with an angry oath 
upon the floor, where it was shivered against 
the coal-box. 


38 WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 

“Get out o’ here, ye Finnegan brat,” he 
shouted ; “ I’ll tache ye to come a’guyin’ o’ me. 
I’ll ” 

The door closed with a bang upon the 
frightened child, alone in the cold night. The 
sun saw not its home-coming. It had hidden 
behind the night-clouds, weary of the sight of 
man and his cruelty. 

Evening had worn into night. The busy 
city slept. Down by the wharves, now de- 
serted, a poor boy sat on the bulwark, hungry, 
footsore, and shivering with cold. He sat think- 
ing of friends and home, thousands of miles 
away'over the sea, whom he had left six months 
before to go among strangers. He had been 
alone ever since, but never more so than that 
night. His money gone, no work to be found, 
he had slept in the streets for nights. That 
day he had eaten nothing ; he would rather die 
than beg, and one of the two he must do soon. 

There was the dark river, rushing at his feet ; 
the swirl of the unseen waters whispered to him 
of rest and peace he had not known since 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUM SAW 


39 


it was so cold — and who was there to care, he 
thought bitterly. No one who would ever 
know. He moved a little nearer the edge, and 
listened more intently. 

A low whine fell on his ear, and a cold, wet 
face was pressed against his. A little, crippled 
dog that had been crouching silently beside 
him nestled in his lap. He had picked it up 
in the street, as forlorn and friendless as him- 
self, and it had stayed by him. Its touch 
recalled him to himself. He got up hastily, 
and, taking the dog in his arms, went to the 
police station near by and asked for shelter. 
It was the first time he had accepted even such 
charity, and as he lay down on his rough plank 
he hugged a little gold locket he wore around 
his neck, the last link with better days, and 
thought, with a hard, dry sob, of home. 

In the middle of the night he awoke with 
a start. The locket was gone. One of the 
tramps who slept with him had stolen it. 
With bitter tears he went up and complained 
to the Sergeant at the desk, and the Sergeant 
ordered him to be kicked out in the street as a 


40 


WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW 


liar, if not a thief. How should a tramp boy 
have come honestly by a gold locket? The 
doorman put him out as he was bidden, and 
when the little dog showed its teeth, a police- 
man seized it and clubbed it to death on the step. 


Far from the slumbering city the rising 
moon shines over a wide expanse of glistening 
water. It silvers the snow upon a barren heath 
between two shores, and shortens with each 
passing minute the shadows of countless head- 
stones that bear no names, only numbers. The 
breakers that beat against the bluff wake not 
those who sleep there. In the deep trenches 
they lie, shoulder to shoulder, an army of 
brothers, homeless in life, but here at rest and 
at peace. A great cross stands upon the 
lonely shore. The moon sheds its rays upon it 
in silent benediction and floods the garden of 
the unknown, unmourned dead with its soft 
light. Out on the Sound the fishermen see it 
flashing white against the starlit sky, and bare 
their heads reverently as their boats speed by, 
borne upon the wings of the west wind. 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 

















SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


Skippy was at home in Scrabble Alley. So 
far as he had ever known home of any kind it 
was there in the dark and mouldy basement of 
the rear house, farthest back in the gap that 
was all the builder of those big tenements had 
been able to afford of light and of air for the 
poor people whose hard-earned wages, brought 
home every Saturday, left them as poor as if 
they had never earned a dollar, to pile them- 
selves up in his strong-box. The good man 
had long since been gathered to his fathers — 
gone to his better home. It was in the news- 
papers, and in the alley it was said that it was 
the biggest funeral — more than a hundred car- 
riages, and four black horses to pull the hearse. 
So it must be true, of course. 

Skippy wondered vaguely, sometimes, when 


44 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


he thought of it, what kind of a home it might 
be where people went in a hundred carriages. 
He had never sat in one. The nearest he had 
come to it was when Jimmy Murphy’s cab had 
nearly run him down once, and his “ fare,” a 
big man with whiskers, had put his head out 
and angrily called him a brat, and told him to 
get out of the way, or he would have him 
arrested. And Jimmy had shaken his whip at 
him and told him to skip home. Everybody 
told him to skip. From the policeman on the 
block to the hard-fisted man he knew as his 
father, and who always had a job for him with 
the growler when he came home, they were 
having Skippy on the run. Probably that was 
how he got his name. No one cared enough 
about it, or about the boy, to find out. 

Was there anybody anywhere who cared 
about boys, anyhow? Were there any boys in 
that other home where the carriages and the 
big hearse had gone ? And if there were, 
did they have to live in an alley, and did they 
ever have any fun ? These were thoughts that 
puzzled Skippy’s young brain once in a while. 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 45 

Not very long or very hard, for Skippy had 
not been trained to think ; what training the 
boys picked up in the alley didn’t run much 
to deep thinking. 

Perhaps it was just as well. There were one 
or two men there who were said to know a 
heap, and who had thought and studied it all 
out about the landlord and the alley. But 
it was very tiresome that it should happen to 
be just those two, for Skippy never liked them. 
They were always cross and ugly, never laughed 
and carried on as the other men did once in a 
while, and made his little feet very tired run- 
ning with the growler early and late. He well 
remembered, too, that it was one of them who 
had said, when they brought him home, sore 
and limping, from under the wheels of Jimmy 
Murphy’s cab, that he’d been better off if it 
had killed him. He had always borne a 
grudge against him for that, for there was no 
occasion for it that he could see. Hadn’t he 
been to the gin-mill for him that very day 
twice ? 

Skippy’s horizon was bounded by the tower- 


46 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


ing brick walls of Scrabble Alley. No sun 
ever rose or set between them. On the hot 
summer days, when the saloon-keeper on the 
farther side of the street pulled up his awning, 
the sun came over the house-tops and looked 
down for an hour or two into the alley. It 
shone upon broken flags, a mud-puddle by the 
hydrant where the children went splashing 
with dirty, bare feet, and upon unnumbered 
ash-barrels. A stray cabbage-leaf in one of 
these was the only green thing it found, for no 
ray ever strayed through the window in Skip- 
py’s basement to trace the green mould on the 
wall. 

Once, while he had been lying sick with a 
fever, Skippy had struck up a real friendly ac- 
quaintance with that mouldy wall. He had 
pictured to himself woods and hills and a regu- 
lar wilderness, such as he had heard of, in its 
green growth ; but even that pleasure they had 
robbed him of. The charity doctor had said 
that the mould was bad, and a man scraped 
it off and put whitewash on the wall. As if 
everything that made fun for a boy was bad. 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 47 

Down the street a little way was a yard just 
big enough and nice to play ball in, but the 
agent had put up a sign that he would have 
no boys and no ball-playing in his yard, and 
that ended it ; for the “ cop ” would have none 
of it in the street either. Once he had caught 
them at it and “ given them the collar.” They 
had been up before the judge, and though he 
let them off they had been branded, Skippy 
and the rest, as a bad lot. 

That was the starting-point in Skippy’s ca- 
reer. With the brand upon him he accepted 
the future it marked out for him, reasoning as 
little, or as vaguely, about the justice of it as 
he had about the home conditions of the alley. 
The world, what he had seen of it, had taught 
him one lesson : to take things as he found 
them, because that was the way they were ; 
and that being the easiest, and, on the whole, 
best suited to Skippy’s general make-up, he 
fell naturally into the role assigned him. 
After that he worked the growler on his own 
hook most of the time. The “gang” he had 
joined found means of keeping it going that 


48 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


more than justified the brand the policeman 
had put upon it. It was seldom by honest 
work. What was the use ? The world owed 
them a living, and it was their business to col- 
lect it as easily as they could. It was every- 
body’s business to do that, as far as they could 
see, from the man who owned the alley, down. 

They made the alley pan out in their own 
way. It had advantages the builder hadn’t 
thought of, though he provided them. Full 
of secret ins and outs, runways and passages, 
not easily found, to the surrounding tene- 
ments, it offered chances to get away when 
one or more of the gang were “wanted” for 
robbing this store on the avenue, tapping that 
till, or raiding the grocer’s stock, that were A 
No. i. When some tipsy man had been way- 
laid and “ stood up,” it was an unequalled spot 
for dividing the plunder. It happened once 
or twice, as time went by, that a man was 
knocked on the head and robbed within the 
bailiwick of the now notorious Scrabble Alley 
gang, or that a drowned man floated ashore in 
the dock with his pockets turned inside out. 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 49 

On such occasions the police made an extra 
raid, and more or less of the gang were 
scooped in, but nothing ever came of it. 
Dead men tell no tales, and they were not 
more silent than the Scrabbles, if, indeed, these 
had anything to tell. 

It came gradually to be an old story. 
Skippy and his associates were long since in 
the Rogues’ Gallery, numbered and indexed 
as truly a bad lot now. They were no longer 
boys, but toughs. Most of them had “done 
time ” up the river and come back more hard- 
ened than they went, full of new tricks always, 
which they were eager to show the boys to 
prove that they had not been idle while they 
were away. On the police returns they figured 
as “ speculators,” a term that sounded better 
than thief, and meant, as they understood it, 
much the same, viz., a man who made a living 
out of other peopled labor. It was conceded 
in the slums, everywhere, that the Scrabble- 
Alley gang was a little the boldest that had for 
a long time defied the police. It had the call 
in the other gangs in all the blocks around, 


50 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


for it had the biggest fighters as well as the 
cleverest thieves of them all. 

Then one holiday morning, when in a hun- 
dred churches the paean went up, “ On earth 
peace, good-will toward men,” all New York 
rang with the story of a midnight murder com- 
mitted by Skippy’s gang. The saloon-keeper 
whose place they were sacking to get the 
“ stuff ” for keeping Christmas in their way had 
come upon them, and Skippy had shot him 
down while the others ran. A universal shout 
for vengeance went up from outraged Society. 

It sounded the death-knell of the gang. It 
was scattered to the four winds, all except 
Skippy, who was tried for murder and hanged. 
The papers spoke of his phenomenal calmness 
under the gallows ; said it was defiance. The 
priest who had been with him in his last hours 
said he was content to go to a better home. 
They were all wrong. Had the pictures that 
chased each other across Skippy’s mind as the 
black cap was pulled over his face been visible 
to their eyes, they would have seen Scrabble 
Alley with its dripping hydrant, and the puddle 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


51 


in which the children splashed with dirty, bare 
feet ; the dark basement room with its mouldy 
wall ; the notice in the yard, “No ball-playing 
allowed here ; ” the policeman who stamped him 
as one of a bad lot, and the sullen man who 
thought it had been better for him, the time he 
was run over, if he had died. Skippy asked 
himself moodily if he was right after all, and 
if boys were ever to have any show. He died 
with the question unanswered. 

They said that no such funeral ever went 
out of Scrabble Alley before. There was a 
real raid on the undertakers where Skippy 
lay in state two whole days, and the wake was 
talked of for many a day as something won- 
derful. At the funeral services it was said 
that without a doubt Skippy had gone to a 
better home. His account was squared. 

Skippy’s story is not invented to be told 
here. In its main facts it is a plain account 
of a well - remembered drama of the slums, 
on which the curtain was rung down in the 
Tombs yard. There are Skippies without 


52 


SKIPPY OF SCRABBLE ALLEY 


number growing up in those slums to-day, 
vaguely wondering why they were born into 
a world that does not want them ; Scrabble 
Alleys to be found for the asking, all over 
this big city where the tenements abound, 
alleys in which generations of boys have lived 
and died — principally died, and thus done 
for themselves the best they could, according 
to the crusty philosopher of Skippy’s set — 
with nothing more inspiring . than a dead 
blank wall within reach of their windows all 
the days of their cheerless lives. Theirs is 
the account to be squared — by justice, not 
vengeance. Skippy is but an item on the 
wrong side of the ledger. The real reckon- 
ing of outraged society is not with him, but 
with Scrabble Alley. 












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